Top Five: Post-Beatles Beatles Post
If you’ve seen/read High Fidelity, you’ll be familiar with the concept of “top-fives,” a narrow interpretation of the BBC’s long-running Desert Island Discs: “top five side-one, track-ones” or “top five songs about death.” Allow me to plagiarize the top-five as a prompt for musical debate. Imagine postprandial disc-jockeying around some node of the musical universe. Maybe a galaxy you know well, maybe not. No force-ranking, no wrong answers. I’m no musicologist, but I love the banter - and as Nietzsche succinctly put it: “without music, life would be a mistake.”
Another mistake would be to begin with The Beatles, but I’m going to do it anyway. Or rather, I want to talk about The Beatles after The Beatles: any recordings that followed Let It Be (1970). Five songs, four (+1) Beatles - shouldn’t be too hard? Alas, this is a meritocracy, not a democracy - and someone needs to be the Walrus (sorry, Ringo). So we begin, chronologically:
“Maybe I’m Amazed” - Paul McCartney (from McCartney, 1970)
No surprise here. I was weened on McCartney by McCartney. You might not know that, with few exceptions, McCartney performed and recorded the entire LP alone on a four-track - which lends credence to his drum chops on certain Beatles LPs. This was a desert island disc for my dad, which makes it one of mine by transient property. Dad carried the band (read: family) on his own during my adolescence, which, for me, brings extra meaning to this record.
“Run Of The Mill” - George Harrison (from All Things Must Pass, 1970)
All Things Must Pass is the best solo LP released by a Beatle, without question. It’s a shame to pick one song as, in this case, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. “My Sweet Lord,” “Wah-Wah,” and “What Is Life” are the more obvious candidates. Hunter (my brother) advocated for “Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)”. But “Run Of The Mill” distills the LP best for me. How’s this for pronouns:
Everyone has choice
When to or not to raise their voices
It's you that decides
“The Back Seat of My Car” - Paul & Linda McCartney (from Ram, 1971)
Ram as an LP has grown on me the most. It’s like scotch whisky or mushrooms: doesn’t taste great until your 30s. Rootsy terroir. There’s also something timeless about the LP that anticipates modern mutations of rock. I wouldn’t want to sit in the back seat of a Beatle’s Beetle but I’ll gladly indulge in the musical fantasy.
“Jealous Guy” - John Lennon (from Imagine, 1971)
Infinitely coverable. And you knew I wasn’t going to pick “Imagine,” because that would have been too easy. “Jealous Guy” is to Lennon what “No Surprises” is to Radiohead - it’s not the weightiest song, but it sits with you. Is this the lived experience of every middle-aged man, or am I just a jealous guy?
“Watching The Wheels” - John Lennon & Yoko Ono (from Double Fantasy, 1980)
Double Fantasy had scarcely been released before John Lennon’s death, and later received a posthumous Grammy for AOTY (1981). “Watching The Wheels” is on top of my karaoke shortlist after a long night spent in a Tokyo “snack” basement for my 30th birthday. An anthem to the nonlinear perception of time:
I'm just sittin' here watchin' the wheels go round and round
I really love to watch them roll
No longer ridin' on the merry-go-round
I just had to let it go
Also-Rans:
“Hold On” - John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band (from Plastic Ono Band, 1970)
“Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey” - Paul & Linda McCartney (from Ram, 1971)
“Live And Let Die” - Paul & Linda McCartney (from 007 and Red Rose Speedway, 1973)
“Let Me Roll It” - Paul McCartney & Wings (from Band On The Run, 1973)
“Fame” - David Bowie, John Lennon (from Young Americans, 1975)
love it